Sunday, November 1, 2015

Moving Period Piece Recounts British Females' Fight for the Right to
Vote

Nowadays,
most females take access to the ballot box for granted. Nevertheless,
they owe a big debt of gratitude to the mostly unsung Suffragettes
who made great sacrifices for decades before securing that
hard-fought right.

In the
United States, women got the vote in 1919 via the 19th Amendment. The
year before, England granted the franchise to females over 30 who
were either landowners, college grads or married to a politician.
However, a decade later, it was finally extended to all British
citizens over 21 on an equal basis. Directed by
Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane), Suffragette is a moving docudrama set in
London during the critical period leading up to Parliament's passage
of the Representation of the People Act of 1918. The film serves up a
substantially fictionalized version of events, as only a couple of
the characters here were real-life heroines, namely, Emmeline
Pankhurst (1858-1928) and Emily Wilding Davison (1872-1913),
portrayed by Meryl Streep and Natalie Press, respectively. Streep
merely makes a cameo appearance as Pankhurst, a pioneer reduced by
advanced age to playing an inspirational role in the movement at that
juncture. Still, that doesn't mean the perennial Academy
Award-contender won't net her 20th Oscar nomination for delivering
yet another sterling performance. The picture's other historical
figure, Davison, was a fiery activist who was periodically imprisoned
for advocating arson, stone throwing and other violent tactics in her
zealous pursuit of the vote. The movie
revolves around Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), a protagonist primarily
a creation of scriptwriter Abi Morgan's (The Iron Lady) imagination.
Curiously, she's initially less a suffragette than a fed up, steam
laundry employee ostensibly motivated by a general desire to improve
women's lot, especially in terms of wages, sexual harassment and safe
working conditions. In many
respects, Maud's persona is suspiciously reminiscent of Norma Rae
(1979), the feisty union organizer played by Sally Field in an
Oscar-winning turn. Might Morgan have deliberately crafted Maud for
Mulligan with an Academy Award in mind? Who knows,
but the parallels are hard to ignore. Both characters are uneducated,
underpaid factory workers . Both have their consciousness raised with
the help of a colleague. And both have unsupportive husbands opposed
to their sudden embrace of political activism. Similarities
aside, Suffragette ultimately proves to be a poignant reminder of
just how far women have come over the past century. Oh, and yes, the
very capable Carey Mulligan is likely to be remembered come awards
season, too.

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The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.